1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) dial plans and more particularly to systems and methods for designing and validating dial plans for VoIP applications and systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
A call routing scheme is a key design task in the deployment of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and determines how calls are routed in VoIP networks. A VoIP network covers one or multiple sites. At each site, routing of VoIP calls is controlled by one or a cluster of call-routing servers (e.g., CallManager in a CISCO® architecture). A call routing scheme is represented by a set of configurations in these servers.
The design of call routing schemes is performed manually. An expert may design the scheme using various visual tools and then configure the call-routing servers based on his design. After all the servers are configured, the designer may run test calls on the configured servers to check whether the routing performs as expected. If routing does not perform as expected, the designer needs to identify and correct the errors in the design or configurations. For example, in a CISCO® architecture, the verification of the call routing scheme (called Dial Plan or Route Plan) is provided using a Dial Number Analyzer (DNA) tool integrated with a Call Manager.
A main drawback of the present systems is that such systems are error-prone. The errors can come from the design phase, i.e., the designer may come up with an incorrect routing scheme design or from the configuration phase, i.e., although the design is correct, mistakes were made when configuring the server due to human error. All of these errors can cause extended design and implementation cycles in VoIP network deployments.
A dial plan is a set of routing policies that dictate the routing of VoIP calls from caller to callee. A dial plan is typically represented as a set of complex configurations inside call routing servers (e.g., a CISCO® CallManager). The dial plan design is complex and requires in-depth knowledge of the deployment platform. Dial plan validation is also difficult and can only be done after deployment and is time consuming because it is a manual process and is error-prone.